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April Reading Activities for Upper Elementary

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April is an exciting time of year. Can you believe it is already the second month of spring? April is the time for spring cleaning, planting gardens and beautiful flowers. With a variety of fun and engaging holidays, April is nothing to joke about {unless it’s April Fools Day}! All jokes aside, you will love these amazing April reading activities and resources to engage your students throughout this month!

April Reading Activities

April Non-Fiction Reading Passages

By April, reading activities in the upper elementary classroom tend to be focused on testing. With standardized tests right around the corner it is a great time to work on all of the reading strategies that you have taught students throughout the year. It’s also a great time to reinforce those testing day procedures you want students to use.

April nonfiction reading passages will help your students practice their reading skills and strategies

While students tend to be unimpressed with yet another reading passage, these four April themed non-fiction passages and comprehension worksheets are sure to get your students excited about learning. This month’s reading passages include: 

  1. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Earth Day)
  2. Jellybeans-A Sweet Treat (Easter)
  3. Plant a Tree-The History of Arbor Day
  4. April Fool’s Day

With four reading passages, you can use one each week following a close read approach. However, you can also complete them as a more traditional reading passage and use them as needed as your prepare for testing day.

Students will love learning about jellybeans in this engaging April nonfiction reading passage

Through these reading passages students will work on many different reading skills and strategies, including:

  • Vocabulary
  • Reading for details
  • Summarization skills
  • Descriptive short answer responses
  • Supporting answers with text evidence

April Fiction Reading Comprehension

The final reading comprehension passage is a fiction story. This is a great activity for helping students put those reading strategies into action. Since the skills often differ between fiction and non-fiction texts, including both is an important part of a well-rounded reading instruction program.

Poetry Reading Comprehension

Help students with understanding poetry that they read with this April's Prayer poetry comprehension activity

One of the hardest reading comprehension genres for students to master is poetry. With the non-traditional structure and format and an increased amount of figurative language, students need as much practice as they can get on reading and understanding poetry.

This poem will have your students digging into personification, onomatopoeia and alliteration as they work through this fun poem about the month of April.

Your students will love celebrating the season with these engaging spring themed reading passages. You will love knowing that they are getting the practice and rigor they need on important reading skills and strategies.

April Language Arts Center Activities

Spring is a great time for students to review skills they have worked on all year long. Review activities are perfect for centers because students can complete them independently without direct teacher involvement. Adding a variety of interactive language arts games and worksheets to your centers will be just what you need during this busy time of year.

April reading activities your elementary students will love

Who doesn’t love a fun game to review and practice academic skills? April’s center activities are filled with fun games covering synonyms, antonyms, and analogies. 

The possibilities for use are endless! Of course the games are great for your every day ELA centers! However, they can also easily be used for small group instruction, intervention and early finisher activities.

Synonym Sort: A Memory Match Game

Teaching students about synonyms helps them to broaden and deepen their vocabulary skills. This leads to enriching their writing skills and reading comprehension. 

This synonym sorting activity will have your students building their vocabulary in a fun and engaging way

In this two to four player game, partners will take turns picking two cards and trying to match a word and its synonym.  If they are correct, they get to keep both cards. The players with the most cards at the end of the game wins!

A great way to extend this activity is to have students explain why their two words are a match. Not only does this help them with their analytical thinking skills, but it is also a great opportunity to practice speaking skills too. And, you can never underestimate the power of students teaching students.

Antonym Action: A Memory Match Game

Students will love practicing their antonyms with this antonym board game

Another fun game focuses on antonyms. This skill works side-by-side with synonyms and helps to further build your students vocabulary and writing skills. 

Almost everything you need for this antonym board game is included. All you will need to add are game markers and a paperclip for the spinner! Math manipulatives, buttons, coins or anything that size make great game markers.

Through the game, students will be drawing multiple cards. If any of the cards they draw make an antonym pair, they get to keep them. All non-antonym pairs are returned to the pile. When the game ends, the player with the most matches wins!

Race the Clock: An Analogy Game

Kids love competition! So they will be begging to play this Race the Clock analogy game with their friends. Here students will match each analogy card with the word that makes the analogy correct. While one student is the timer, the other student works quickly to match all the analogies. Then they switch, seeing who can complete the task in the fastest time. This game also make a great partner game too!

Overall comprehension skills are reinforced when teaching analogies because students are forced to find the relationship between things. Students will learn how to effectively compare things while participating in higher order thinking skills.

Scrambled Analogies

Students will love practicing analogies with this no prep cut and paste worksheet

Give students one more opportunity to fine tune their analogy skills with this cut and past analogy matching worksheet. This no prep worksheet is great for morning work, independent practice or to use as an informal assessment of students understanding of analogies.

Students are provided with a list of analogies and finishing words. They will start by cutting all the pieces apart and then match up and glue the correct pieces on their Scrambled Analogies answer sheet.

April Themed Writing Fun

Compare and Contrast Writing

Students can use the Venn Diagram to plan their writing and focus on the compare and contrast before starting the final writing process

Spring is fully alive in April! Your students will love comparing and contrasting spring with another season in this guided writing activity. Using the provided resources, students will plan their writing using a Venn diagram. This is a great way to help them gather their thoughts and do some of the comparing and contrasting before they begin writing. What’s great about a planning activity like this is that when it is time to write, students can focus on writing skills like word choice and sentence structure.

Also included are a themed page for their final writing and an illustration page. The final product makes a great bulletin board or hallway writing display.   

Students will work on writing a comparative writing as they compare and contrast spring with another season.

Spring Time Haiku

This spring haiku writing activity will have upper elementary students writing and illustrating their haiku poem in no time

Just as reading poetry is a skill students struggle with, writing poetry can fall in the same category. We spend so much time focusing on expository writing and personal narratives that writing poetry often gets pushed to the end of the year.

Engage your students with this fun haiku writing activity about spring. The resource includes the haiku syllable rules, sample poems and planning to guide your students to poetry writing success. After writing, students will love illustrating their very own haiku about nature. 

Grab Your April Reading Activities

Take some of the stress out of this month with these fun and engaging April reading activities. You and your students can fully explore this month and all that it has to offer with these reading passages, center games and writing fun.  You can find all of these April reading activities in the Appletastic Learning store.

April Reading Activities for the Upper Elementary Classroom

Looking for more fun in April?

Looking for more fun and engaging activities for your April lesson plans?

Save these April Reading Activities

Pin this to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can come back all month long for more April reading activities and classroom learning fun.

April Reading Activities for the Upper Elementary Classroom

Shelly Rees

Hi, I’m Shelly! Thank you for being here. I love helping third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers with fun and engaging activities that require no to little prep! Let me help you by taking some of the stress and work off your plate.

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Hi, I'm Shelly

Hi, I’m Shelly! Thank you for being here. I love helping third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers with fun and engaging activities that require no to little prep! Let me help you by taking some of the stress and work off your plate.

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